Where's Rooster?

In the past year, he’s made the Guinness Book of World Records, shook hands with the President of the United States of America, and seen rock band Soundgarden’s first major concert in 14 years.  But Clark native Dave Bierstien says one event stands above the rest – shooting a hot dog from an oversized novelty hot dog gun into the stands at a Nebraska Cornhuskers football game last fall.

Barack Obama can’t compete with pork.

Bierstein – “Rooster” to his friends, family, and just about anyone he meets – was at the NFL Experience in the Dallas Convention Center two days before the Green Bay Packers would defeat the Pittsburgh Steelers in the Super Bowl.  He's been on the road for more than six months, has racked up 19,000 miles, and has stayed a week in 28 states across the country with hopes of turning his experiences, stories, and adventures into some sort of lasting testimonial.  As he tells it, “I have a huge master plan, but things that dreams are made of – that this becomes a book, a movie, a sitcom, that this continues to be something.”  And if it doesn’t, he’s at least in the middle of one wild journey.

“I went back to college at 32,” explained Bierstein while waiting for a friend at the NFL Experience.  “After you graduate at 35 with straight A’s you’re a hero.  The day after, you’re homeless.” 

Bierstein graduated from Kean University in May 2010, and like many graduates in recent years, didn’t have a job lined up or a plan post-graduation.  “I only had $2,007 to my name, and literally in five minutes on the couch, I decided to go for it,” he says of the decision to pack his life into his 2002 Altima and hit the road.

“The whole journey’s planned loosely,” said Bierstein, who keeps a daily blog of his adventures at wheresrooster.com.  “I originally planned myself to Arizona – where casinos were, where I could stop, and so on.  From Arizona on, I knew generally what states I wanted to go to, but I didn’t really think I’d make it that far.” 

Bierstein, who lived for a number of years in Arizona and California before returning to New Jersey and earning a degree in Media & Film from Kean, earns money by playing poker or taking odd jobs, as well as soliciting donations through his website.  Well over $2,000 has been donated – and that’s actual cash, not including gifts or a bed for the night.  “The amount of generosity among people has been absolutely incredible,” he says.  He stays wherever he can – usually hotels, sometimes at a friend’s house. 

Often, it’ll be a friend-of-a-friend or complete stranger who offers him a bed for the night.  “A lot of them are secondary friends, I meet them literally that day and they bring me in and treat me like family,” says Rooster.  “It’s been absolutely incredible.  On at least four or five occasions I’ve stayed with people I didn’t know before and stayed for a few days at a time."

He’s not just looking to fund his own trip, however.  Bierstien attempts to do some manner of charity work at each stop along the way.  “Soup kitchens to helping out children to youth football,” he said.  “I’m trying to get to Texas Food Bank tomorrow,” though the weather in Dallas was making travel difficult at the time.

He ranks Las Vegas, Chicago (where he managed to get into Lollapalooza for Soundgarden’s reunion concert in August), and his former home of Arizona among his favorite stops so far.  What about the places he didn’t expect to enjoy as much as he did?  “There’s a few states that I was shocked were as awesome as they were,” says Bierstein.  “Omaha, Nebraska was amazing.  Missoula, Montana was amazing, a real low-key, laid-back place.”

Omaha, of course, was where he got to fire a hot dog into the stands at the University of Nebraska football game.  “When you can shoot a piece of pork into 70,000 screaming fans, that’s an amazing experience,” he says of the unusual highlight.

In Seattle, he wound up with a ticket to Barack Obama’s speech at the University of Washington in October.  “Meeting the president was incredible,” Bierstein says.  He managed to have someone snap a photograph of him shaking Obama’s hand as the President quickly greeted the front row of the crowd, one of thousands of pictures that add visual illustration to his daily blog posts.

One of the stranger pictures you’re bound to find anywhere on the site is from Las Vegas.  Among the essentials Bierstein has packed into his Altima is a giant rooster outfit, which most mistake for a chicken suit.  “In Las Vegas, there were over 12,000 people that ran in a 5K charity race dressed as Santa Claus,” explains Bierstein.  “I personally ran as Chicken Claus, because I wore my big rooster outfit.”  That race set the world record for “Most People Dressed as Santa Running a 5K,” and will be in the next edition of the Guinness Book of World Records.

If Bierstien is able to sell a book on his adventures across the country, People Are Awesome seems like an appropriate title, as the phrase appears dozens of times on his website when discussing the donations, offers of places to stay, and friends he’s made over the past six-plus months.  “Our country is awesome.  People across this country, regardless of race or religion, have all treated me the same.  Everyone has been unbelievable.  They’ve all found something in my trip that makes them want to open up to me and be around.”

And when he finally gets home to New Jersey?  “It’ll be the best week I have, it’ll be the last week in my journey,” says Bierstien.  “Jersey week will be a week I dream of.”